The Noe Valley Girls Film Festival’s ("NVGFF") mission is to encourage young girls to make movies with goals of creating a new generation of movie makers, promoting Noe Valley, and having fun. With today’s technology, anyone can learn to make a movie.

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

NVGFF is seeking short film submissions made by girls anywhere in the world in two age groups (6th-8th grades and 5th grade and under). Submissions are due by August 1, 2018, and the finalists are expected to be announced in late-August, 2018. The festival will be held at 4:00 pm on September 8, 2018 at the Noe Valley Ministry in Noe Valley, San Francisco, CA. At the festival, we expect to present the top submissions, have a well known local filmmaker present awards to the winners, and to have a raffle.

ABOUT THE FOUNDERS

In early 2016, a group of girls living in Noe Valley decided to form NVGFF. They loved making movies and wanted to give an opportunity to other young girls to make and present their movies to a real live audience. The girls started creating films in elementary school and have collectively made almost fifty movies. They enjoyed film making so much that they decided to start a festival for all of the girls of Noe Valley. They have been meeting every week and believe the film festival will be a great way to bring the people of Noe Valley together to watch films, and try to help girls feel empowered to be involved in film making.

Why We Started the Noe Valley Girls Film Festival

by Charlotte and Ella (both age 12 at the time)

We first started making movies together in the 5th grade. We both had already made short films on our own beforehand.

One weekend, we both decided to work together on a project called the “Adventures of Annoying Apple”. The movies were about an apple with his own unique personality that would come to life and go on all sorts of adventures. We used editing software and learned how to make simple effects. For example, we could make things disappear, fly through the air, and edit our voices so they sounded different. We each also created our own production company. Charlotte’s was named Murphy Films after her dog, and Ella’s was named Avocado Films, because of the avocado tree in her backyard.

Our younger 4th grade sisters then joined us. They starred in several movies, and we all had so much fun much working on the films. Then, after a while, we were thinking... We love filmmaking so much, that what about starting our own film festival for all the kids of Noe Valley so that the best films could be seen by real live audiences?

We started to meet together every week to work on the project. After a few meetings, we decided to limit it to eighth grade and under girls only in order to promote girls making films in Noe Valley.

We hope to create an annual event that will bring girl film makers and Noe Valley residents to together for a fun filled evening of great film and local spirit.